The Old Clay Center Suffolk

Originally published Sheep Production Mar/Apr 1985

CLARK BREDAHL
Greenfield, Iowa

Clark runs 200 whiteface ewes (Finn X
Ramboullet X Dorset) bred to Suffolk and
Hampshire rams. He has a small
commercial herd of Hereford X Angus
brood cows and plants half to two-thirds of
his farm to row crops.

THE old Suffolk ram died last week.
No, he wasn’t defending his honor

in a love triangle, and he didn’t get into
the corn bin. He died in his sleep.

It wasn’t totally unexpected, although
he and the rest of the “guys” were fine
the night before.

From a distance, he appeared merely
to be dozing in the early morning sun-
head tucked back on his front shoulder.
But the somber mood of his buddies
made me gulp hard as I strode across the
shed to kneel over the frozen, still form.

For some reason, I calmly patted his
stiff ears-something I made a point of
never doing to him, or any other ram, in
life. A flood of memories rushed over
me …

How, those many years ago, we’d
hauled him from the research station at
Clay Center, Nebraska, in a driving
thunderstorm that literally seemed to
chase us all the way home. Standing,
bedraggled and shaking, in the dim light
of our wet barn late that night, he
seemed little like the bright-eyed bruiser
we had loaded hours before.

The next morning, he still appeared
slow to me, and as much to calm my own
fears as anything else, I gave him a stiff
belt of antibiotic. It was to be the last day
I would ever worry about his health.

I was chided a little by the neighbors
who failed to see the reason in driving so

far just to buy an “educated” ram. The
following March, his first offspring
silenced most of the critics; by June,
when the initial draft was sold, we knew
we had a gem.

Now, as I stroked his frosty neck, I
smiled: It was those few tufts of dark
wool beneath my fingers that sealed our
fate together.

He had been in a pen of five rams at
Clay Center, being groomed for a major
purebred sale, but was scratched at the
last minute because of a smattering of
dark fiber. That didn’t bother me; I was
looking strictly for a terminal sire. So,
when I was told which of the rams I
would have to take, I thought smugly to
myself that he was the one I really

wanted anyway!

I felt the scaly scar tissues in the
middie of his now-gray forehead-
testament to the countless
“disagreements” he never shied away
from. Most were in the name of love.

Many were the crisp, still October
evenings when I’d step outside to the
well platform and listen for his deep
“basso profundo” emanating from the
pasture a quarter mile away. Hearing it,
I’d rest assured that the breeding season
was going well.

What a stroke of fate it had been
several autumns previous that, on a
morning when I had planned to sell him,
another much younger ram turned up
lame, and a reprieve was granted. It was
shortly after he reduced me that year,
with slaughter ram prices hovering in the
8-10 cent range that I made my pact with
him: My home was his for as long as he
cared to stay.
Funny, despite his having sired
perhaps 1,000 offspring for me, I didn’t
have one of his descendants on the place.
Blackface ewes, you see, don’t fit my
breeding program. But there areperhap
a couple hundred of his twin and triplet
daughters carrying on his legacy in
flocks around the neighborhood.
Next month, a few more will yet be
born!

I rose and found a twine to tie around
his hind legs. The other rams sniffed
their old rival one last time, as I dragged
him from the shed-marveling that
despite his years he was still a bruiser.
The Old Clay Center Suffolk
1973-1985
May the grass be as green on the other
side…